The opening shorts are a nice homage to old-day theatre, where before your movie you'd get a little short film as a means of "cleansing the palette" before plunging into the movie. Most modern movies now do this by showing us car ads, candy ads, and ads for athletic shoes. Pixar uses them to show off particular styles of animation that mirror older 2D animation techniques.
As for Cars - I'm not so impressed by the actual look of the cars, I think the Chevron ads did anthropomorphic cars better, but then again I'm not really part of the Nascar fanbase... hair is too curly to grow me a good mullet, you see.
I remember him as
Grand Nagus Zek, from DS9. It took me such a long time to place the voice, although there really is no mistaking it.
He really does have the ultimate whiny, evil insurance boss voice. Everyone in the theatre cheered when Mr. Incredible finally lost patience with him and... well go see the movie yourself, whydontcha?
Blizzard does all of their animation in-house, and they are very well known for their high quality work. Their artists are obsessive with detail, and the standards for getting into one of their animation jobs are sky-high.
And represent the game they're trying to sell? That's a matter of opinion: they're trying to make the most exciting and visually pleasing movie possible using the source material, which they do, and do rather well. A video reflecting in-game gameplay would be best served by... recording in-game gameplay, maybe? It sure as hell wouldn't be as interesting to watch, that's for sure.
It's better than the alternative, which is the increasing stagnation of the national space program. I'd really like to see a manned mission to mars in my lifetime or something of similar importance... and if that requires giving some (or lots) of money to the general population to a) renew interest in space exploration, and b) get some potentially helpful outside ideas, then why not?
Maybe we really will learn if anys can sort tiny screws in space
If I remember correctly, there was a/. story not that long ago about companies who were planning to make rental DVDs which after a certain period of time would deteriorate when exposed to air because of a special coating - so if you go to Blockbuster you might find yourself choosing between the "Indestructible" and "Self-Destructing" DVD aisles.
Depends on what you mean by superior hardware... the xbox2 and PS3 (when they come out) will usually have a performance and graphical edge over all but the very highest-end pcs, and it's doubtful they'll cost more than the video card alone of today's high-end PCs as well ($500- x800 PE).
My real reason for staying with PC for my gaming is because of hardware upgrades, increased resolution (can't afford an HDTV, really), and suprno- uh... legitimate software vendors.
They don't, at least not to this artist. I spend on average 20 hours a week drawing in photoshop alone, and all of that is done on a PC. Never mind the time I spend in Painter, Expression 3 and Illustrator. My PC is an ugly, ugly beast where the case siding is removed and a house fan blows inside. The monitor is a high quality 17 inch (BNC connectors) circa 1995, so it's as beige and bulky as you can get.
And I don't care. Because the money I save buying parts that do the same thing yet don't look as fancy means I can devote more capital to making my art look its best, which should be the priority of any artist.
It's sunday, which means slow news and lots of old recycled stuff.
Don't get too down, it's still Saturday night, go out and party with you friends and have a good time.
Anyway, the "Ricer" comparison is a little off - there really is no vigilante force as far as I can tell, people do what they want, when they want, and no matter how odd or strange they are they still get kudos from someone and shrug off the criticism - if not, we'd have been out of trolling ACs on/. a long time ago.
This post written by a drunk university student. Please correct spelling & grammar.
Except that Diablo II had no monthly fee, so you really can't knock Blizzard all that much. MOst people were pretty occupied with the game's single player portion or hadn't purchased the game by the time the multiplayer had settled down anyway. And fanbois? Head over to gamerankings and look at the reviewer scores for Blizzard games... they deserve their fanbase.
I'm not the parent, but I can still say that I play Die By the Sword - at least 3 times a week - it's only SIX years old, but Treyarch and Interplay have long stopped caring about or supporting the game.
And the big issue here with HL2 is that it's a single player game, there's no need for anyone to have to log online, yet they're making it mandatory anyway. It's something I and many others are becoming increasingly fed up with, because they make you go through increasing circles of bullshit in order to play a game you spent hard-earned money on.
When Doom 3 came out I bought a copy the day after release, and then I was told I had to remove CloneCD, Daemon Tools and Nero in order to get the game to work with their moronic copy protection. As much as you like to say Valve and id can do whatever they want with their software, this is crossing the line between "protecting their copyright" and "taking over my computer". I can't wait until Windows Media Player will automatically uninstall and registry-ban Winamp and iTunes...
As things go, I don't want Steam. I don't want the 500-some-odd megabyte install I had to do when they decided to move TFC over, I don't want to wait for Steam to patch itself, I don't want the memory and processor overhead of having Steam running as a background process whenever I start my computer and checking for updates, I don't want to hear about Valve's latest news whenever I login to play whatever game I bought years ago, I don't want to play CS:Source.
I would have bought Half-Life 2 because I was interested in playing Half-life 2.
Now I'll just download the game a week early on Bit Torrent, crack it, and then purchase the box copy and leave it sealed on my shelf. I shouldn't have to, but at least my way everybody wins.
Just watched the first episode, and I have to say Halo was a good choice of game, because everyone was a master chief, with a full helmet on. Facial expressions and lip syncing were blissfully bipassed and we didn't really think much about it.
This new show doesn't seem to do so well, the Sims 2 probably has some of the most expressive characters for a popular video game, but they still seem to be a little off in matching up faces, expressions and voices... IANAprofessional commedian, but not having them synced makes comedic delivery of dialog far less effective, as those brilliantly funny moments don't hit all at the same time.
On the subject of online poker, TillerMan, once a top-ranked Warcraft 3 player, stopped playing Warcraft as a "pro" gamer and became a poker player instead, where he apparently now makes several times what he used to as a "cyber athlete".
Apparently gaming can teach you the skills you need for a very small portion of jobs, but there's little chance of it keeping you employed.
Did any of you RTFA? This is more about implementing a system for UN diplomatic underlings to get work done online than having the UN "take over" the internet. The concept of having a secure, government to government electronic communication system probably would be faster, cheaper and more effective than gathering in Geneva every time we want to discuss the price of cod fish.
This month's PC Gamer (November 2004), 10 page Quake IV exclusive - it is following in Quake 3's foot steps, in that it's going to be deathmatch, deathmatch, deathmatch. The vehicles from single player won't make it across, as I'm reading:
So what about multiplayer? We're told to have no fear.
Our goal is to re-create the Quake III:Arena experience in the new engine," Willits tells us. "We're going to deliver more than four players [Doom3's multiplayer max], no matter what."
Some might hear those words and feel glum that Quake IV is not promising any kind of multiplayer revolution. But I'd say "Not so fast" - Arena-style multiplay in Carmack's latest engine sounds like plenty of revolution to me. The primary multiplayer experince mode are expected to be the Arena staples of Deathmatch and team capture-the-flag...
...No plans currently exist to transfer any of the vehicles found in the single player game over to multiplay. The official line for now that is that vehicular combat is assoviated with multiplayer only shooters like Battlfield 1942.
I would disagree with your post - although I'm having difficulty understanding "People should take not that PC gamer is essentially a marketing tool to get gamers to buy the games that gives 'exclusives' to the mag."
As a long time reader of PC gamer (since the 4th issue of the magazine, which is now on to issue 129) AND a reader of CGW, IGN and Gamespot, their scores don't deviate all that much from one another or from Game Rankings. Every once in a while you will get an anomaly, but that can be chalked up to their being very different reviewers with different tastes for different games. Many PC Gamer "cover Games" have sucked, see the South Park issue (February 1998) and then watch as it gets slammed with a below 50% score. Same goes for well-hyped games like Soldner, which recieved great press up until the review copy, which stank.
Sure, triple-A, big-budget titles will usually turn out to gain high scoring reviews, but that's a benefit of having a high budget and superstar developers, like Blizzard - they get hyped because they put out good games, not the other way around.
I don't think anybody wants to compete with UT2004. No one, including Battlefield 1942, does it better right now. It's addictive, there's almost no learning curve, and even n00bs can have a good time and rack up high scores by playing support. Doom 3 only had basic deathmatch, Quake IV will be mainly single-player as well. It's not surprising Valve didn't want to go through the monumental investment of getting a good multiplayer option going when they already had CS.
I mean, there was Team Fortress 2, and it looks like a stillborn from here- there's been no real news on the game for at least two years, and almost all of the features intended for it have made their way into other realistic war themed shooters (parachuting into missions from planes, allies showing up as squad re-inforcements, voice chat).
Uh, this could just be dumbness on my part, but maybe the lensflare filter was based off that same type of lensflare? Could very well just be a coincidence.
Did you try Far Cry with it? What kind of performance did you get? My 9500 non pro softmodded to 9700 pro speeds still had trouble with that one, although admittedly I didn't OC it.
Re:Personally, I would go one step further.
on
Game with God
·
· Score: 1
Well, in the Chronicles of Narnia you can ignore quite a few of the stories. The Magician's Nephew covers Genesis to an extent, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe covers the Resurrection, and the Last Battle covers judgement day. The other four novels I don't think are direct parallels to any Christian or Jewish history or mythology.
Also, depite being an atheist now, I dearly, dearly loved Narnia. Perhaps the upcoming movie will be a catalyst for a quality interactive version of the Chronicles.
I think a large reason for this is that many, many games for the hardcore gaming audience deal with killing in some way. Your Half-lifes, Warcrafts, GTAs usually involve killing a lot of people (There are other genres, like racing and sports games which are also popular but don't really lend themselves to religion all that well, Mahatma ghandi's Racing Rally Challenge not withstanding).
It's difficult to make a game about Jesus (or whichever all-good deity) that will appeal to these people. So far game developers have turned the game into some sort of holy war, and more or less ignore all those religious calls for forgiveness and compassion, as in Requiem: Avenging Angel and Messiah.
For now, I could see something like Ultima IV's need for morality being integrated into games that featured religous characters, or possibly incorporated into some aspects of The Sims. However, I don't think there's enough gameplay options in today's market for them to be a viable alternative as a genre on their own.
See where it says "Think Different" on the bottom?
And yes, I do use windows. Photoshop in CMYK, printer in CMYK, many wonderful built-in colour matching profiles included. I'm not sure what point it is you're trying to make anymore with Photodoodle , or if you even had a point to begin with. The rest, as they say, is flamebait.
Yeah, same style of font, although I think Blizzard actually did make their own Diablo font. Custom-designed to be difficult to read, in case of emergency you can take an L and stab someone in the eye with its sharp seriffed edges.
Have you tried World War 2 online? It got mixed reviews when it came out, but it's supposed to be a lot better now.
As for Doom3, well it's supposed to be scary - but really I think the big hype is more a resuly of Carmack's new engine - Quake 3 is STILL being used in major games today (Call of Duty) so Doom 3 promises to make some pretty advances for 3rd party licensors in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
The opening shorts are a nice homage to old-day theatre, where before your movie you'd get a little short film as a means of "cleansing the palette" before plunging into the movie. Most modern movies now do this by showing us car ads, candy ads, and ads for athletic shoes. Pixar uses them to show off particular styles of animation that mirror older 2D animation techniques.
As for Cars - I'm not so impressed by the actual look of the cars, I think the Chevron ads did anthropomorphic cars better, but then again I'm not really part of the Nascar fanbase... hair is too curly to grow me a good mullet, you see.
I remember him as Grand Nagus Zek, from DS9. It took me such a long time to place the voice, although there really is no mistaking it.
He really does have the ultimate whiny, evil insurance boss voice. Everyone in the theatre cheered when Mr. Incredible finally lost patience with him and... well go see the movie yourself, whydontcha?
Blizzard does all of their animation in-house, and they are very well known for their high quality work. Their artists are obsessive with detail, and the standards for getting into one of their animation jobs are sky-high.
And represent the game they're trying to sell? That's a matter of opinion: they're trying to make the most exciting and visually pleasing movie possible using the source material, which they do, and do rather well. A video reflecting in-game gameplay would be best served by... recording in-game gameplay, maybe? It sure as hell wouldn't be as interesting to watch, that's for sure.
It's better than the alternative, which is the increasing stagnation of the national space program. I'd really like to see a manned mission to mars in my lifetime or something of similar importance... and if that requires giving some (or lots) of money to the general population to a) renew interest in space exploration, and b) get some potentially helpful outside ideas, then why not?
Maybe we really will learn if anys can sort tiny screws in space
If I remember correctly, there was a /. story not that long ago about companies who were planning to make rental DVDs which after a certain period of time would deteriorate when exposed to air because of a special coating - so if you go to Blockbuster you might find yourself choosing between the "Indestructible" and "Self-Destructing" DVD aisles.
Depends on what you mean by superior hardware... the xbox2 and PS3 (when they come out) will usually have a performance and graphical edge over all but the very highest-end pcs, and it's doubtful they'll cost more than the video card alone of today's high-end PCs as well ($500- x800 PE). My real reason for staying with PC for my gaming is because of hardware upgrades, increased resolution (can't afford an HDTV, really), and suprno- uh... legitimate software vendors.
They don't, at least not to this artist. I spend on average 20 hours a week drawing in photoshop alone, and all of that is done on a PC. Never mind the time I spend in Painter, Expression 3 and Illustrator. My PC is an ugly, ugly beast where the case siding is removed and a house fan blows inside. The monitor is a high quality 17 inch (BNC connectors) circa 1995, so it's as beige and bulky as you can get. And I don't care. Because the money I save buying parts that do the same thing yet don't look as fancy means I can devote more capital to making my art look its best, which should be the priority of any artist.
It's sunday, which means slow news and lots of old recycled stuff. Don't get too down, it's still Saturday night, go out and party with you friends and have a good time. Anyway, the "Ricer" comparison is a little off - there really is no vigilante force as far as I can tell, people do what they want, when they want, and no matter how odd or strange they are they still get kudos from someone and shrug off the criticism - if not, we'd have been out of trolling ACs on /. a long time ago.
This post written by a drunk university student. Please correct spelling & grammar.
Except that Diablo II had no monthly fee, so you really can't knock Blizzard all that much. MOst people were pretty occupied with the game's single player portion or hadn't purchased the game by the time the multiplayer had settled down anyway. And fanbois? Head over to gamerankings and look at the reviewer scores for Blizzard games... they deserve their fanbase.
I'm not the parent, but I can still say that I play Die By the Sword - at least 3 times a week - it's only SIX years old, but Treyarch and Interplay have long stopped caring about or supporting the game.
And the big issue here with HL2 is that it's a single player game, there's no need for anyone to have to log online, yet they're making it mandatory anyway. It's something I and many others are becoming increasingly fed up with, because they make you go through increasing circles of bullshit in order to play a game you spent hard-earned money on.
When Doom 3 came out I bought a copy the day after release, and then I was told I had to remove CloneCD, Daemon Tools and Nero in order to get the game to work with their moronic copy protection. As much as you like to say Valve and id can do whatever they want with their software, this is crossing the line between "protecting their copyright" and "taking over my computer". I can't wait until Windows Media Player will automatically uninstall and registry-ban Winamp and iTunes...
As things go, I don't want Steam. I don't want the 500-some-odd megabyte install I had to do when they decided to move TFC over, I don't want to wait for Steam to patch itself, I don't want the memory and processor overhead of having Steam running as a background process whenever I start my computer and checking for updates, I don't want to hear about Valve's latest news whenever I login to play whatever game I bought years ago, I don't want to play CS:Source.
I would have bought Half-Life 2 because I was interested in playing Half-life 2.
Now I'll just download the game a week early on Bit Torrent, crack it, and then purchase the box copy and leave it sealed on my shelf. I shouldn't have to, but at least my way everybody wins.
Just watched the first episode, and I have to say Halo was a good choice of game, because everyone was a master chief, with a full helmet on. Facial expressions and lip syncing were blissfully bipassed and we didn't really think much about it.
This new show doesn't seem to do so well, the Sims 2 probably has some of the most expressive characters for a popular video game, but they still seem to be a little off in matching up faces, expressions and voices... IANAprofessional commedian, but not having them synced makes comedic delivery of dialog far less effective, as those brilliantly funny moments don't hit all at the same time.
On the subject of online poker, TillerMan, once a top-ranked Warcraft 3 player, stopped playing Warcraft as a "pro" gamer and became a poker player instead, where he apparently now makes several times what he used to as a "cyber athlete".
Apparently gaming can teach you the skills you need for a very small portion of jobs, but there's little chance of it keeping you employed.
Did any of you RTFA? This is more about implementing a system for UN diplomatic underlings to get work done online than having the UN "take over" the internet. The concept of having a secure, government to government electronic communication system probably would be faster, cheaper and more effective than gathering in Geneva every time we want to discuss the price of cod fish.
This month's PC Gamer (November 2004), 10 page Quake IV exclusive - it is following in Quake 3's foot steps, in that it's going to be deathmatch, deathmatch, deathmatch. The vehicles from single player won't make it across, as I'm reading:
So what about multiplayer? We're told to have no fear. Our goal is to re-create the Quake III:Arena experience in the new engine," Willits tells us. "We're going to deliver more than four players [Doom3's multiplayer max], no matter what."
Some might hear those words and feel glum that Quake IV is not promising any kind of multiplayer revolution. But I'd say "Not so fast" - Arena-style multiplay in Carmack's latest engine sounds like plenty of revolution to me. The primary multiplayer experince mode are expected to be the Arena staples of Deathmatch and team capture-the-flag...
I would disagree with your post - although I'm having difficulty understanding "People should take not that PC gamer is essentially a marketing tool to get gamers to buy the games that gives 'exclusives' to the mag."
As a long time reader of PC gamer (since the 4th issue of the magazine, which is now on to issue 129) AND a reader of CGW, IGN and Gamespot, their scores don't deviate all that much from one another or from Game Rankings. Every once in a while you will get an anomaly, but that can be chalked up to their being very different reviewers with different tastes for different games. Many PC Gamer "cover Games" have sucked, see the South Park issue (February 1998) and then watch as it gets slammed with a below 50% score. Same goes for well-hyped games like Soldner, which recieved great press up until the review copy, which stank.
Sure, triple-A, big-budget titles will usually turn out to gain high scoring reviews, but that's a benefit of having a high budget and superstar developers, like Blizzard - they get hyped because they put out good games, not the other way around.
Bless you guys - did you happen to get copies early, or will you only get to start once HL2 goes retail?
I don't think anybody wants to compete with UT2004. No one, including Battlefield 1942, does it better right now. It's addictive, there's almost no learning curve, and even n00bs can have a good time and rack up high scores by playing support. Doom 3 only had basic deathmatch, Quake IV will be mainly single-player as well. It's not surprising Valve didn't want to go through the monumental investment of getting a good multiplayer option going when they already had CS.
I mean, there was Team Fortress 2, and it looks like a stillborn from here- there's been no real news on the game for at least two years, and almost all of the features intended for it have made their way into other realistic war themed shooters (parachuting into missions from planes, allies showing up as squad re-inforcements, voice chat).
Uh, this could just be dumbness on my part, but maybe the lensflare filter was based off that same type of lensflare? Could very well just be a coincidence.
You might also notice that sarcasm eludes me.
Did you try Far Cry with it? What kind of performance did you get? My 9500 non pro softmodded to 9700 pro speeds still had trouble with that one, although admittedly I didn't OC it.
Well, in the Chronicles of Narnia you can ignore quite a few of the stories. The Magician's Nephew covers Genesis to an extent, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe covers the Resurrection, and the Last Battle covers judgement day. The other four novels I don't think are direct parallels to any Christian or Jewish history or mythology.
Also, depite being an atheist now, I dearly, dearly loved Narnia. Perhaps the upcoming movie will be a catalyst for a quality interactive version of the Chronicles.
I think a large reason for this is that many, many games for the hardcore gaming audience deal with killing in some way. Your Half-lifes, Warcrafts, GTAs usually involve killing a lot of people (There are other genres, like racing and sports games which are also popular but don't really lend themselves to religion all that well, Mahatma ghandi's Racing Rally Challenge not withstanding).
It's difficult to make a game about Jesus (or whichever all-good deity) that will appeal to these people. So far game developers have turned the game into some sort of holy war, and more or less ignore all those religious calls for forgiveness and compassion, as in Requiem: Avenging Angel and Messiah.
For now, I could see something like Ultima IV's need for morality being integrated into games that featured religous characters, or possibly incorporated into some aspects of The Sims. However, I don't think there's enough gameplay options in today's market for them to be a viable alternative as a genre on their own.
See where it says "Think Different" on the bottom? And yes, I do use windows. Photoshop in CMYK, printer in CMYK, many wonderful built-in colour matching profiles included. I'm not sure what point it is you're trying to make anymore with Photodoodle , or if you even had a point to begin with. The rest, as they say, is flamebait.
0.4 kbps per second over here... by the time this finished the game will be out!
Yeah, same style of font, although I think Blizzard actually did make their own Diablo font. Custom-designed to be difficult to read, in case of emergency you can take an L and stab someone in the eye with its sharp seriffed edges.
Have you tried World War 2 online? It got mixed reviews when it came out, but it's supposed to be a lot better now.
As for Doom3, well it's supposed to be scary - but really I think the big hype is more a resuly of Carmack's new engine - Quake 3 is STILL being used in major games today (Call of Duty) so Doom 3 promises to make some pretty advances for 3rd party licensors in the future.